Relations between President Barack Obama and U.S. corporate leaders have grown tense in recent weeks, with business groups bristling over his sharp rebukes of lenders and multinational companies in particular.
Executives and trade groups that praised Obama's outreach during his post-election transition period say they have felt less welcome since he took office in January. More troubling, they say, are his populist-tinged, sometimes acid critiques of certain sectors, including large companies that keep some profits overseas to reduce their U.S. tax burden.
On Thursday in New Mexico, Obama chastised the credit card industry for sharply raising interest rates or fees with hard-to-find notice. He said consumers should be protected from "all kinds of harsh penalties and fees that you never knew about." Some of the dealings by credit card companies, he said, "are not honest."
He tempered his comments, however, saying Americans must be responsible for the debt they incur.
"Banks are businesses, too," Obama told a gathering in Albuquerque. "They have a right to insist that timely payments are made."
The gentler remarks, after weeks of increasingly sharp rhetoric, reflect Obama's efforts to avoid a full-scale war with business interests. He picks his shots, praising companies that embrace his proposals for health care and other matters, while hammering those that oppose him.
Some business leaders have focused on the harsh words lately, saying the president is being unduly divisive.
"It is traditional class-warfare rhetoric," said Jade West, a lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "It's a little bit frightening."
Bill Miller, political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called Obama's remarks "an oversimplification of the real world."
Particularly in the areas of finance and taxation, Obama's language often seems to echo, and perhaps fuel, public anger over matters such as the large bonuses paid to executives of AIG, an insurance giant that was bailed out with public money.
When the president called for ending tax breaks for corporations doing business overseas, he assailed a "broken tax system, written by well-connected lobbyists on behalf of well-heeled interests and individuals."
In proposing to overhaul college loans, Obama said, "We have a student loan system that's rigged to reward private lenders without any risk."
After he accused a handful of Chrysler debt holders of seeking "an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout," some reportedly received death threats.
Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker says Obama uses such pointed language to create an us-against-them dynamic in which he aligns himself with average Americans and depicts his opponents as selfish powers working just for themselves. Obama's targets, Baker says, usually are unsympathetic and faceless corporations or hedge funds.
"If you use inflammatory, populist language," Baker said in an interview, "it's best to use it on organizations or interests that aren't terribly popular."
"It's a negotiating ploy," he said. In the early stages of a presidency, he said, "you advance your cause very dramatically, even confrontationally."
These are the same strategies that Obama used when training ACORN members in Chicago, instructing them to actually physically interupt meeting and confront members of financial institutions who did not "follow" their beliefs!
He is using the same strategy now as President!
